Out of Hiding

 June 20, 2022

I remember my first love. I was twelve, and other than the love of my parents, for the first time in my life understood what love was like. No, it wasn’t that first kiss, unless you count the kiss of God himself. I had learned that even at that young and inexperienced age, I was a sinner in need of God’s grace and Christ’s salvation. The invitation was given and I stood up, climbed past grown-up knees, and walked down the aisle to stand beside pastor Ellis, who had just issued the invitation to be saved.

To this day, I can remember how happy I was, how eager to tell my friends…until I was ridiculed. No one had prepared me for this, and I countered by hiding in the safety of the familiar and friendly, ie. the church. As I look back, I believe I’ve spent much of my life hiding in the church. I have no trouble at all proclaiming the Gospel within its walls, but sharing my faith in the  marketplace is another story. It’s only been fairly recently that I’ve mustered courage enough to venture out in the rock’em-sock’em world the people I preached to for fifty years inhabit daily. Maybe another word for love is courage.

Jesus told the Ephesian church that if they didn’t change, he would come quickly and remove their candlestick, ie. the church itself. His reason? They had left their first love. They began with passion, but over time their hard work had degenerated into predictability. His remedy? Repentance; changing how they thought about life and service.

God has been gracious, giving me many years to reflect and repent; to change my thinking, to get back to my first love, but a lifetime of hiding requires a lot of repenting. Here’s what I know: it’s possible to work hard for Jesus, to be faithful to his Word, even to be successful in ministry—all without love. We can serve out of guilt or obligation, or from a force of habit. It’s not that we intend to serve in any other way, but ask anyone whose marriage has fallen apart; it’s easy to drift out of love. Jesus is looking for love, which comes from a recognition of the depth of our sin and the greatness of our salvation. The one forgiven much is the one who loves much, and as Mother Theresa used to say, “If you cannot do great things, do small things with great love.”